Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) S.Africa land issue: white farmers form vigilantes

S.Africa land issue: white farmers form vigilantes
Philip Murombedzi
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:11:00 +0000

THE struggle for land ownership in South Africa is taking a new form as white farmers in the country are turning to vigilante behaviour to protect their farms from an increasingly restless and marginalised black population.

Fifteen years after the African National Congress assumed power in Zimbabwe's southern neighbour, the land issue remains unresolved and approximately 3,000 white farmers are said to have been killed in land tenure conflicts.

South Africa's farmers’ organisations say 3,000 whites in commercial areas have been killed since the ANC came into power in 1994.

An independent South African Human Rights Commission recently concluded that 'there was a considerably higher risk of a white victim of farm attacks being killed or injured than a black victim' and since the mid-Nineties, 900,000 mainly white South Africans have emigrated from South Africa - about 20 per cent of the white population.

White commercial farmers in the country are reported to have started taking courses in self defence and gun use to protect themselves from invaders.

They go on 'farm protection weekend' courses where they are trained in para-military techniques. One of the courses is being held only 70 miles from the 2010 World Cup venue of Polokwane, according to reports.

A report by the United Kingdom's Daily Mail concluded that many of the white commercial farmers ar: "taking part in the weekend courses for about 50 people at a time learn to leopard-crawl with a gun and are taught self-defence (with knives and guns), how to look for signs that their homes are being targeted, bush tracking and how to shoot from a moving vehicle.

"They are given target practice with AK-47s, pistols, R4 and R5 assault rifles and 308 hunting rifles."

The report concluded that fresh violence had erupted on South African farms, but had remained largely unreported.

A reporter with the newspaper said he had been "called by ... farmers to a string of grisly murder scenes."

"In some the blood was still drying on the furniture or the street. In others, witnesses gave me accounts of killings involving rituals of extreme brutality: of victims boiled alive, forced to kneel and shot execution style and tortured in ways so unimaginable they are too horrendous to print."

The paper quoted an "Afrikaner Boer" saying, "The Afrikaner Boer doesn't like war but we will fight if we have to - and the Africans are scared of us."

Hundreds of black South Africans are said to have lodge legal land claims in which they must prove their rights to property based on family historical records; but the Boers are said to be challenging and resisting those claims, leading to violence in the commercial farming areas of that country.

"The Boers are resisting the loss of their land because, they say, it spells the end of a way of life for a community," reports the Daily Mail adding that "bloody violence ... is politically motivated all the way to the top of the ANC."

The white farming community in the country is said to have been unnerved by the election of 'freedom fighter', Jacob Zuma, as president. Zuma used an old war chant from his days in the ANC's military wing, Mshini wami - 'Bring me my machine-gun'.

Whites in South Africa fear that Zimbabwe-style land redistribution will occur in South Africa.

President Mugabe has long been given standing ovations and rapturous applause at ANC events. He got a rapturous welcome when he recently attended the inauguration of Zuma as president.

HIT SQUADS

White armers in the country are said to have formed 'hit squads' that are well armed with AK-47s. They are deployed in gangs to protect white-owned farms.

The police in South Africa are said to be inexperienced or unqualified to deal with these challenges, and the government is blamed for "playing politics with the land issue".

A police officer was reported as saying, "The whole criminal system is a balls-up for white and black people. We just don't need this."

The land problem in South Africa goes back to the earliest colonial times, when native lands were expropriated from their rightful owners - often without compensation.

The 1913 Natives' Land Act codified those injustices by preserving some 87 percent of the country's land for the exclusive use of the white minority.

Labels: LAND REFORM, SOUTH AFRICA, WHITE FARMERS

posted by MrK @ 2:09 PM